Chapter 2 - THE NAME FROM HIS PAST
“Sophie, why did Emma tell you I was her father?”
The question hung inside the ambulance beneath the wail of the siren.
Sophie sat pressed against Nathan’s side, both hands wrapped around his fingers. Her face was pale beneath a scattering of freckles, and every few seconds she glanced toward the stretcher as though she were afraid Emma might disappear if she looked away too long.
“I’m not supposed to tell,” she whispered.
Nathan looked at the unconscious sixteen-year-old.
A paramedic was securing an oxygen mask over Emma’s face while another checked the monitor above her.
“Sophie.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
“If Emma told you to call me, then whatever secret she was protecting stopped being more important than keeping her safe.”
The little girl swallowed.
“Mom had a box.”
Nathan felt something tighten in his chest.
“What kind of box?”
“A wooden one. Brown. It stayed underneath her bed.”
“Your mother’s bed?”
Sophie nodded.
“Emma found it after Mom died.”
Nathan froze.
“I’m sorry. When did your mother die?”
“Seven weeks ago.”
Sophie said it with the flatness of a child who had repeated the sentence too many times.
Nathan stared at her.
Seven weeks.
Two children.
One sixteen.
One seven.
“Who’s taking care of you?”
“Emma.”
The answer was immediate.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“What about relatives?”
“Aunt Monica comes sometimes. But she lives in Milwaukee and says she can’t keep missing work.”
“And your father?”
Sophie looked down.
“My dad left when I was two.”
Nathan had more questions than he could organize.
“Your mother’s name. What was it?”
Sophie rubbed her thumb across his knuckles.
“Rachel.”
Nathan’s world stopped.
“Rachel what?”
“Rachel Bennett.”
For seventeen years, Nathan had trained himself not to react when he heard that name.
He had learned to sit through dinners where someone mentioned a Rachel without looking up.
He had learned not to think about the cheap apartment near Northwestern where she used to burn pasta and laugh about it.
He had learned not to remember the green coat she wore the last winter they were together.
He had learned not to remember standing outside her empty apartment at twenty-three, holding flowers like an idiot, after his father had told him she had left Chicago and never wanted Nathan to contact her again.
Rachel Bennett.
The only woman Nathan Cole had ever seriously considered marrying.
“What did your mother look like?” he asked.
Sophie blinked.
Then she pointed weakly toward Emma.
“Like her. A little.”
Nathan looked at the girl on the stretcher.
The familiar shape of her face no longer seemed coincidental.
His heart began beating hard enough to hurt.
“Emma found the box,” Sophie continued. “There were pictures. And letters. Lots of letters.”
Nathan barely heard the siren anymore.
“What letters?”
“Mom wrote them.”
“To who?”
Sophie looked at him as if the answer should have been obvious.
“You.”
The ambulance doors opened before Nathan could respond.
Doctors and nurses surrounded Emma immediately.
Sophie cried out as they wheeled her sister away.
“Emma!”
Nathan caught her before she tried to follow the stretcher through the trauma-room doors.
“They have to help her.”
“I want to go with her!”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t like hospitals.”
Nathan crouched in front of her.
“Sophie, look at me.”
She did.
Barely.
“I need you to do something very hard.”
Her chin trembled.
“What?”
“Trust me for ten minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to make sure Emma gets the best doctors in this building, and I need to make sure nobody separates you from her.”
Sophie wiped her cheek.
“You promised you wouldn’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
That seemed to matter.
Nathan stood and pulled out his phone.
He called Lauren first.
She answered before the first ring finished.
“Nathan?”
“Get Daniel Mercer from legal to Lakeshore Medical Center. Now.”
“What happened?”
“Possible family matter. Keep it private.”
There was a pause.
Lauren had worked for Nathan for nine years. She knew when to stop asking questions.
“I’m on it.”
“And Lauren?”
“Yes?”
“Find out everything you can about Rachel Bennett.”
Silence.
Lauren knew that name.
Years earlier, after too much whiskey at a company retreat, Nathan had mentioned Rachel exactly once.
“I understand.”
Nathan ended the call.
His second call was to Marcus Hale, Northstar’s head of security.
“I need traffic cameras around Maple and Jefferson. Three forty to four ten this afternoon. Black SUV involved in a hit-and-run.”
“I’ll get it.”
“And Marcus?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t request them through normal company channels.”
Marcus paused.
“That sounds specific.”
“It is.”
“Understood.”
Nathan returned to Sophie.
A nurse had given her apple juice and a blanket.
She was staring at the trauma-room doors.
Nathan sat beside her.
“Tell me about the box.”
Sophie hesitated.
“Emma said Mom wanted her to open it if something happened.”
“What was inside?”
“Pictures. Papers. A necklace. And letters.”
“What pictures?”
“One was Mom when she was young.”
Sophie looked at Nathan carefully.
“You were in it.”
Nathan’s breathing slowed.
“Me?”
“You were kissing her.”
Despite everything, an image flashed through his mind.
Rachel laughing as Nathan tried to take a photograph with a cheap disposable camera near Lake Michigan.
Rachel telling him he took terrible pictures.
Rachel kissing him anyway.
“Was there anything else?”
“A hospital bracelet.”
Nathan turned toward her.
“Whose name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Emma bring the box with her today?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
Sophie became guarded.
“I can’t say.”
Nathan studied her.
For seven years old, she had an impressive instinct for protecting information.
“Emma told you not to?”
Sophie nodded.
Nathan respected the answer.
“Okay.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No.”
“Adults get mad when kids don’t answer.”
“I’m not asking you to betray your sister.”
Sophie examined his face.
Then she whispered, “Emma was going to your building.”
Nathan’s pulse jumped.
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“She was taking something to me?”
Sophie nodded again.
“She said if you saw it, you’d know Mom didn’t lie.”
“Lie about what?”
Before Sophie could answer, the trauma-room doors opened.
A doctor walked toward them.
Nathan stood.
The physician looked to be in her forties, calm but serious.
“I’m Dr. Maya Chen. Are you family?”
Sophie grabbed Nathan’s hand.
“He’s her dad.”
Nathan felt the words again.
This time he didn’t correct her immediately.
“I may be,” he said. “I’ve just learned there’s a possibility.”
Dr. Chen’s expression shifted, but only slightly.
“Emma has a concussion, two fractured ribs, and a significant cut near her scalp. The scans don’t show internal bleeding in her brain, which is good news.”
Sophie let out a tiny sound.
Nathan closed his eyes for half a second.
“Is she going to live?”
Dr. Chen looked at Sophie.
“Yes, sweetheart. We believe she is.”
Sophie burst into tears.
Nathan pulled her against him.
For reasons he could not explain, his own eyes burned.
“Can we see her?” he asked.
“Soon. She’s still unconscious. We want to monitor her carefully.”
Dr. Chen looked at Nathan.
“There’s something else.”
Nathan’s body went rigid.
“What?”
“When we were checking her belongings, we found this.”
The doctor handed him a clear plastic property bag.
Inside was a silver chain.
Attached to it was a small oval locket.
Nathan recognized it before he touched it.
“No.”
His voice came out nearly soundless.
He opened the bag.
His hands, hands that had signed billion-dollar agreements without trembling, shook as he opened the locket.
Inside were two photographs.
The left side showed Rachel Bennett at twenty-two.
The right side showed Nathan Cole at twenty-three.
Nathan stared at his younger face.
He remembered the photograph.
Rachel had taken it while he was asleep on the floor of their first apartment after they had spent an entire night assembling cheap furniture.
On the back of the locket was an engraving.
Nathan turned it over.
Three letters.
N. R. E.
Nathan.
Rachel.
Emma.
His knees nearly gave out.
Sophie looked up.
“Mom wore that all the time.”
Nathan stared toward the room where Emma lay unconscious.
“She never told me.”
Sophie’s expression changed.
Not confusion.
Anger.
“She did.”
Nathan looked down.
“What?”
“Mom told you.”
“Sophie—”
“She wrote you every year.”
Nathan felt as if someone had struck him.
“What are you talking about?”
“On Emma’s birthday.”
Sophie’s voice shook.
“Mom wrote you a letter every year on Emma’s birthday. She showed me once. She said maybe one day you’d answer.”
Nathan could barely speak.
“I never received them.”
Sophie stared at him.
“Not even one?”
“Not one.”
The child’s eyes filled.
“Then where did they go?”
Nathan had no answer.
Thirty minutes later, Lauren arrived with Daniel Mercer, Northstar’s general counsel.
Nathan met them in a private hallway.
Lauren took one look at his face.
“It’s Rachel.”
Nathan nodded.
“She had a daughter.”
Lauren’s expression went still.
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
Daniel understood immediately.
“Oh.”
Nathan handed him the locket.
“She told the younger girl I’m Emma’s father.”
Daniel studied him.
“Do you believe it?”
Nathan looked through the glass window into Emma’s room.
“I don’t know what I believe.”
His phone vibrated.
Marcus Hale.
Nathan stepped away and answered.
“What did you find?”
Marcus didn’t respond immediately.
That was unusual.
“Marcus?”
“I found the SUV.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“Plate?”
“Partially obscured.”
“Driver?”
“Can’t see the face.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
“Because there’s something you should know.”
Nathan glanced toward Lauren.
“What?”
“The SUV didn’t just happen to be passing through the intersection.”
Nathan’s blood went cold.
Marcus continued.
“Traffic footage shows it parked across from Sweet Rise Bakery for almost twenty minutes before Emma and Sophie arrived.”
Nathan stared through the hospital window at the unconscious girl.
“And?”
“It followed them for two blocks.”
Nathan’s fingers tightened around the phone.
Marcus’s voice dropped.
“Then it accelerated the moment Emma stepped into the crosswalk.”
Nathan’s gaze shifted to Sophie.
The seven-year-old was sitting beside Emma’s bed now, holding her sister’s hand.
This had not been an accident.
Someone had followed them.
Someone had known where they would be.
May you like
And if Emma had been walking toward Nathan’s office carrying proof of who she was, there was only one question that mattered.
Who was willing to hurt a sixteen-year-old girl to keep Nathan Cole from learning the truth?
